Of Linus, KDE, and mouse buttons

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Evan Leibovitch <evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org>

| Robert Brockway wrote:
| > On Sat, 29 Mar 2008, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
| >
| >> Normally I like to control my environment.  Perhaps too much.
| >
| > I insist on complete control of my environment.  Well the computer
| > environment - I'm still working on controlling the weather.
| As a result, you -- and other folks with your skill and interest in this
| area -- will find much to fault with pretty well all of the current crop
| of GUIs. Indeed, the debate into which Torvalds entered was the classic
| quandry of simplicity versus flexibility, and how much of one you can
| get without sacrificing the other.

Evan was not replying to me, but I'll pretend he was.

Your post was interesting and insightful.  But not about me in this
particular area.

I don't use EMACS, I use JOVE for editing.  Although the human
interface is similar, JOVE is massively simpler.  It is only an
editor.

I don't use EMACS for mail, I use (AL)PINE.  PINE is designed to be
simple.  I could use something more complicated, but I don't really
like complexity without proportionate utility.

I'm not whining that I cannot tweak a desktop to be just the way I
want it.  I might do so if I found a desktop to actually powerfully
useful.  I wish I were at that stage.

I imagine that all desktops can proved for my usage patterns -- I'm
not using anything too advanced as far as I know.

I want a desktop to be transparent: I don't want to have to think
about how to tell it do something, I want to have the illusion that I
am doing something -- "direct manipulation".  That requires an
investment in time to train muscle memory and so on, at various
levels.

That makes me conservative: I don't try something unless I
see some likelihood of a valuable result.  I'd love some pioneer to
tell me what she found worthwhile so I don't have to do the investing
in unworthy systems.

I admit laziness.  There are systems that I've meant to investigate
but haven't gotten around to -- like Plan 9 from perhap 20 years ago!
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